Developing Elans Digital Platforms - Elan Virtual Eco museum

1.    Introduction

This project was developed to ensure that much needed investment is made to ensure that the natural, built and ancient heritage and cultural heritage at Elan is safeguarded and celebrated in a way which supports and develops the people and communities in and around Elan, including the market town of Rhayader who’s businesses depend so heavily on the visitors to the nearby valley. 

The innovation within this project is bringing the idea of the ‘eco-museum’ to Powys. The concept has however been used worldwide as a community-and place-based approach to conserving cultural and natural heritage and promoting dialogue and enthusiasm for the future. 

The deliverables focus on developing technology suited to the Elan Valley as the Elan Valley doesn’t have a mobile signal and as such the mainstay way of information flow is severely handicapped. This project will redress this by utilizing the most appropriate technology to ensure information can be made available.

2.    Challenge

The biggest challenge the project faced was the delays with the initial version of the app for the piloting.  The developers encountered a number of problems coding the car audio and the hot spot text to work with the GPS so that the app knew when to play what bits.  We had originally asked for the whole car audio to be played as a whole with a stop start, but then realised during testing this that actually the different points on the tour needed their own clip so that they could be played in whatever sequence the participant was navigating the valley.  A substantial rework was required to change this.

As well as this main challenge our piloting was able to pick up (as expected with developing a project such as this) a number of snagging issues where the app crashed, wouldn’t load or play the right information in the right place.  There was also a lot of work undertaken that the gps coordinates of all of the locations were correct and the staff team had to check these several times. 

There were also challenges to the piloting process as to actually download the app a piece of testing software had to be first added to the user’s phone and registered separately with the developer and app store.  This then sent an email to the user, and sometimes this would end up in the junk folder which the user would not find.

When the app was finally ready to be available to the public via the app stores there was also a delay in obtaining the appropriate licences and id’s from apple which further delayed things.

3.    Solution

The team made a number of changes to the app during the piloting phase, based on feedback received, this did make the piloting phase really useful as we were able to really test the technology worked, discover the glitches, such as incorrect GPS locations for hotspots and routes and resolve these issues so that the final version worked without issue.

4.    Benefit

The concept of the project and app helps communities to conserve their resources and traditions and encourages communities to become involved with their heritage. It also encourages both tourists and communities to visit and focuses on identity of a place and the relationships between places and the people who live there. The concept is well embedded through the landscape scale approach already being undertaken by the Elan Links: People, Nature & Water landscape scale National Lottery Heritage Fund Scheme

5.    Result

The Elan Valley app has been developed, piloted and is now working well within the area. Although the development of the app was slower than originally envisaged it is now working well and will continue to be developed and integrated further as a key tool for navigating the Elan Valley and its unique heritage